Saturday, July 4, 2015

The Pursuit of Happiness

"Independence Day in America"

- At the Desert Retreat House -

At first I thought I was reading some sort of online “spoof”
about life in contemporary America, but then I discovered it was an actual
report about some new trends in the corporate life in this country. It appears
as if some of the more cutting-edge corporations like “Google” have now added a
new position to their roster of chief executive officers. Now, in addition to a
CEO - Chief Executive Officer, and a CFO - Chief Financial Officer, is the
newly-added position of a CHO - the Chief Happiness Officer.

Although this may sound somewhat satirical, it’s really what
is happening in many of America’s top-level corporations nowadays.

As one might suspect, the main job of the CHO is to make
sure that all the employees in the corporation are “happy.”The CHO monitors employee conversations, and
observes their body postures, including how often they smile – always checking
for the “happiness factor.”In order to
boost corporate happiness, every morning the typical CHO adds some humorous cartoon
or a funny story to the desktop of employees guaranteed to bring a smile to
their faces when they log in. The CHO also arranges for a variety of comfort
foods to be served in the cafeteria, organizes “Happy Hour” events, and even
runs various corporate assemblies where the employees can get together and have
some fun.

As it turns out, the principle reason for adding the CHO to
the company roster is because corporate America is convinced that “happy”
employees are also more “productive.”So, while the bosses may be “happy” that their employees are “happy,” they
are way more interested in the fact that this means they are more “productive.”

What I also found interesting about these new CHO positions is
that many of the people who occupy this role also claim to be Buddhists - after
all the Buddha has a lot to say about happiness.And yet, paradoxically, the Buddha’s approach
to happiness may actually look quite a bit different from the way in which one
of these new CHO officers might approach happiness in today’s work force.

For the Buddha, we human beings find “true happiness” when
we don’t “cling onto” or “crave” anything in life. In essence, you can’t be genuinely
happy by pursuing happiness- seeking after the bigger, the better, the newer,
clinging to and hording all the stuff you have accumulated in life. The
Buddha’s teaching is basically the antithesis of the gospel preached by
corporate America in our own culture today.

Today Americans celebrate Independence Day, a day to
reverence our Declaration of Independence - the inalienable rights to “life, liberty and the
pursuit of happiness” guaranteed to every citizen of this land. But on this Independence Day, I really wonder
if we haven’t gone way off track when it comes to understanding what happiness
and the pursuit of happiness is really all about.

It seems to me that someone can be perfectly content and extremely
satisfied, smile a lot,chuckle at jokes
all day long, enjoy hour-long “happy hours,” live in a nice house and even have
plenty of cash in the bank and yet, when it comes right down to it, can still
be pretty miserable.

I am convinced that we
can only be happy by making others happy.

We can only find true happiness when we change the focus of
our lives from gazing inward at our own self-centered ego and instead look
outward in relationship with others. The pursuit of happiness involves looking
toward the building up of the common good - the good of the poor and the needy
as well as the good of those who have nice cushy jobs in a fun corporation, the
good of those who live in nice homes as well as the good of those who sleep on
a piece of cardboard on a sidewalk.

I think Martin Luther King Jr, may have really “nailed it”
when he talked about this idea of what happiness means and what it means to
pursue happiness:

Those who are not looking for
happiness are most likely to find it

because those who are searching
forget that

the surest way to be happy is to
seek happiness for others.

On this Independence Day, I reverence that Declaration of my
native land. I do indeed believe we all have a right to be happy and to pursue
happiness, and so I pledge again to devote myself to the welfare of the common
good.

On this 4th of July, I also have a little fantasy
about those employees who will go to work on Monday and when they log onto
their computers, instead of a finding a morning chuckle in their inbox, they
discover that their Chief Happiness Officer has posted a “happiness quote” from
the Dalai Lama:

About Me

I am a teacher, a writer, and a spiritual guide. I am an ordained Episcopal Priest and hold degrees in theology, philosophy, and communication. I am particularly interested in the common spiritual insights which the many various world religions share with one another.

My wife and I live in the beautiful desert in the Coachella Valley of Southern California.